My colleague Anjan Thakor and I are inviting HR leaders and executives to join an eight-week learning community at no cost. The focus is how to create an organization of higher purpose.
Over the last seven years we have studied how to align the higher purpose of an organization to the practices of the workforce. We believe there are some best practices that will help you succeed, and we articulated them in a Harvard Business Review article (July-Aug, 2018). The article includes a story about Gerry Anderson and DTE Energy. In 2008, DTE Energy had a crisis – they were about to fold financially. In desperation the CEO (Gerry) made a radical shared commitment with his employees. He pledged to do layoffs only as a final resort, and in return he asked them to spend the next year using all their resources and energy to save the company.
At the end of the year when Gerry reviewed their numbers, they were not only good enough to keep them afloat, it was the best financial year in their history as a company. (Listen to him share his turnaround story in this Harvard Business Review podcast .) Gerry learned that both people and the business thrive when they have a shared (and authentic) higher purpose. We build and expand substantially on that HBR article in the book we are publishing this August called The Economics of Higher Purpose: Eight Counterintuitive Steps for Creating a Purpose-Driven Organization.
We believe higher purpose is not just a lofty ideal; it has practical implications for people and for profit. People who find meaning in their work don’t hoard their energy and dedication. They give them freely, defying conventional economic assumptions about self-interest. They grow rather than stagnate. They do more—and they do it better. So does the company.
We invite you to join a learning community with us and other top performing executives like yourself. We are capping the subscriber list at 50 and we have 15 spots left.
We will send a weekly message for the next 8 weeks via email. Each week we will share insights about one of the steps in our book and send actionable advice, assessments, tools, research or stories that will help you make connections about implementing purpose in your organization. We also plan to do a special invitation-only webinar with this group. We will share some thoughts on higher purpose, and field questions about creating a purpose-filled organization. At the end of the eight weeks we will send you a free copy of our new book. There will be no charge for any of this, and there is no time requirement – as much or little as you want to invest. If you want to be part of the community, or you would like to nominate someone in your organization, please email me at leadingwithlift@gmail.com.